Mom is heavy on my mind today. Not only is March 20th her birthday, our first without her on this plane, but she died four months ago today at age 91. She passed peacefully in her bed on that beautiful clear Sunday, with my family by her side. Even our dog, Karma, would not leave until she crossed the veil. … Read More
Art of the Wheel
My sweet, proper, southern mother of 91 years has always been curious. She loves learning and is easily fascinated by what she doesn’t know, or what she finds intriguing. Like car wheels. My mother has had a life-long fascination with car wheels. Safety, design, color, model and make are important elements in vehicle options for sure, but my sharp, smart … Read More
Let it be Soul
I’ve always found it interesting that siblings – children from the same parents, kids born from the same gene pool and cut from the same DNA – can be so vastly different from one another and their families. It’s true for my brother and me, and it’s true for the generations of siblings I’ve known throughout my life, including most … Read More
Finding Peace in the Pieces
The word “peace” comes up a lot this time of year: we share peace at the holidays; we offer peace to our friends and neighbors; we sing songs of peace for the world, and we send cards and gifts adorned with doves and good wishes and blessings of all kinds. But do we live it? Looking at the daily chaos, … Read More
What Price Peace
One of my favorite songs during the holidays is “Let There Be Peace On Earth” written in 1955 by Jill Jackson Miller and Sy Miller. From the time I was young, the combination of music and lyrics in this song stopped me in my tracks and, most times, reduced me to a blubbering mess until the last note faded away. … Read More
I Observe, I Imagine – A Cool Tool for Hot Times
It is so easy to judge other people – friends, family, enemies – based on something they said or did, or on something we observe and don’t like about them. In fact, judging seems to be THE default setting for most of us humans around the world. Especially now with 24-hour news that feeds on sensationalism as much as story, … Read More
Writing – the call of the Empath
My rich, full life as wife, mother, business partner in two companies, social justice warrior and free-lance writer was recently, and quite unexpectedly, expanded into the realm of also being a full-time daughter to an 88 year-old mother who suffered a stroke. Mom lost the feeling on her right side, and she suffered some hiccups to her memory, but thankfully … Read More
Here’s to you, and you, and you and you…
I can’t wait for a delicious Burger 21 lunch tomorrow. Not just because it’s Burger 21 and I LOVE their hamburgers, milkshakes and sweet potato fries with all of those wild and wonderful sauce options, but because tomorrow is Jackson Day. Burger 21 will donate a percentage of their full day of sales to Jackson Middle School here in Orlando, … Read More
That Same Old COD DOC Moon
I’m nearly done with the rewrite of my first novel – book one of The Vessels trilogy. Set in Reno, Nevada, it focuses on the birth of the newest Vessels Program, where select young people, suffering and alone in the world, are chosen to host Spirits wishing to return to this life and fix things from their past. This is … Read More
Where Have Women Gone?
http://variety.com/2015/film/awards/awards-seasons-female-troubles-1201391200/ This article makes my heart and my head hurt about just how underrepresented women are — in movies, in media, in the workplace, in politics and government, in leadership, in life. And yet (according to Time Magazine and nielsen.com) — they make up more than 50% of the population, hold half of the nonfarm jobs, own nearly a third … Read More